(510 COLLISION WITH A BERG. 



able voyage, a diary, which, he faithfully kept till the 

 rescue; iu this he jotted clown, day by day, every incident 

 he deemed worthy of note, with comments of his own. 

 This diary is not only intensely interesting, but is exceed- 

 ingly valuable, as it affords a detailed history of the oc- 

 currences of each day in its order ; its interest is enhanced 

 by the elevated tone of pious dependence on God that 

 pervades the comments of its author. We shall quote 

 some of its more striking notes, and shall be guided by it 

 in the chronological arrangement of the narrative. We 

 give, by way of introduction, Herrou's first entry : 



October 15. Gale from the southwest ; ship made fast 

 to floe ; bergs pressed in and nipped the ship until we 

 thought she was going down ; threw provisions overboard, 

 and nineteen souls got on the floe to receive them and 

 haul them up on the ice. A large berg came sailing down, 

 struck the floe, shivered it to pieces, and freed the ship. 

 She was out of sight in five minutes. We were afloat on 

 different pieces of ice. We had two boats. Our men were 

 picked up, myself among them, and landed on the main 

 floe, which we found to be cracked in many places. Saved 

 very little provisions. 



October 16. We remained shivering all night. Morn- 

 ing fine ; light breeze from the north ; close to the east 

 shore. The berg that did so much damage half a mile 

 to the northeast of us. Captain Tyson reports a small 

 island a little to the north of the berg and close to the 

 land. Plenty of open water. We lost no time in launch- 

 ing the boats, getting the provisions in and pulling around 

 the berg, when we saw the Polaris. She had steam up, 

 and succeeded in getting a harbor. She got under the lee 

 of an Island and came down with her sails set -jib, fore- 

 sail, mainsail and staysail. She must have seen us, as the 

 island was four or five miles off. We expected her to 

 save us, as there was plenty of open water, beset with ice, 

 which I think she could have gotten through. In the eve- 



